


how lovely the silence of growing things

by 26stars



Series: How I Met Melinda [20]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU Meeting, All The Tropes, AoS Ficnet Hallmark Movie Challenge, Background Joey/Lincoln, City Slicker!Daisy, F/F, Fluff, Homestead, Multi, Rancher!May, Shield-Free AU, Tags to be added, background Huntingbird - Freeform, background fitzsimmons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27950864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: Melinda May is a rancher who rides horses, raises herds, and runs a high-tech slow-food homestead in Wyoming. Daisy is a total city slicker who is on the way to her mom's new house for Christmas when her car spins off the snowy road not far from May's property. Thankfully, the Cavalry arrives and helps Daisy out, gets her inside, feeds her dinner with the crew, and offers a place to stay for the night. Just in time for the rest of the snowstorm to roll in and cut everyone off from the highways for at least a week.Throughout the next few days, Daisy gets to know May, her animals, and the ranch hands, eats farm-fresh foods, learns to ride a horse, and gets to catch her breath in a little community of people who aren’t related but clearly care deeply about each other and have made a beautiful, quiet life together. It's clear that she has stumbled upon a magical place, and Daisy is totally drawn to…the quiet country life. Just that. Nothing more.~For the AoS Ficnet Hallmark movie challenge!~
Relationships: Melinda May/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Series: How I Met Melinda [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/797127
Comments: 41
Kudos: 43
Collections: AoS Topsy-Turvy Hallmark Holidays, Women of the MCU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to whoever posted the AU generator in the discord, bc it spit out the most wonderful, tropey prompt ever, and I've been so excited to write this fic.
> 
> Thank you also Lily and Maggie for your soundboarding and M for your title help!
> 
> Title quote from Evan Dicken

Daisy knows her mom had dreamed of this forever. Retiring in the mountains, building a nice house in the quietest part of the country, miles and miles from the next family, with space to breathe and land to plant whatever she wanted…not everyone wanted to live out the rest of their days in relative isolation, but this was exactly what Jiaying had set herself up to do (“Not _isolation_ , Daisy. Privacy, safety, and quiet. Everything we never had in the city.”). Daisy has heard enough stories of her mother’s childhood in the mountains of China that she knew her mother was still compromising by staying in America instead of moving back to Yunnan, and she was doing this entirely for Daisy and her sister. Neither of them have ever lived in China, would have been well out of their depth travelling there alone, and besides that, tickets across the Pacific cost enough that moving there would have given her girls an excuse to hardly ever visit.

So…Wyoming it was. With the last of the life insurance money from Daisy’s dad’s death, Jiaying had bought some land and had a house built on it throughout the past two years, and now that it’s livable, it’s time for the girls to re-locate their annual Christmas reunion. Her mother had never made much of the holiday growing up—she’d been the one to teach them about Chinese New Year—but after their dad, the instigator of any Christmas celebration, had passed, her mother had kept up the traditions mostly for the sake of their children. If she had her way, her girls would come home every _Chunjie_ , not Christmas, but American culture set their school and work schedules, so an annual Christmas reunion it was.

Daisy had been born in bred in NYC, the fabled city where anyone from anywhere could make a new start and be anyone they chose. She’s used to trees in the context of Central Park and field trips only, but mountains had only ever been a vacation destination. Still, after hearing so much about the supposed mountains around her mom’s home, Daisy found herself unimpressed as her plane came in for a landing at Cheyenne’s itty bitty airport.

Everything looked rather…flat.

Jiaying had sent her money to rent a car from the airport to drive to Cody, and it had been just enough for Daisy to reserve a non-luxury sedan before she left for the trip.

Now, after signing the paperwork, being handed a set of keys, and stowing her suitcase in the trunk of the car, Daisy runs into her first problem before she’s even left the lot: her mother’s new address isn’t in the car’s GPS system.

“Well, if it’s a new house, then yeah, it wouldn’t show up,” the lot attendant says unhelpfully when she asks him for help. “Maybe you could try just putting in the road?”

Of course, Wyoming has more than one 188th street, but they’ve got it narrowed down to the one in her mom’s town before too long. Her mom’s address at least shows up in Google Maps on Daisy’s phone, so she feels confident enough to get on her way—the app says it’s a five hour drive, and she wants to make it there by dark.

Problem number two happens not long after she hits the highway: snow.

No one mentioned snow.

Daisy has seen snow plenty—NYC got its fair share—but she’d barely ever driven in it. No one could accuse NYC of being car-friendly, so even though she’d had a license since college, she’d never owned a car. When it snowed and the busses didn’t run, Daisy stuck to the subway or called Ubers or just didn’t go anywhere.

So the first time she hits the brakes and feels her car do something she didn’t know cars could do, Daisy starts to get nervous. She still has a good half-tank of gas, but at the next gas station, she pulls off the interstate, trying to go more slowly as she chugs up the exit ramp. When she brakes at the red light at the top, her car does that thing again, and she feels her hands starting to sweat as she turns her car into a gas station lot…

…and the car just… keeps turning…

She may have actually shrieked, but she’s only panting as her car slides to a crooked stop in a mercifully empty area of the parking lot. She just sits there for a long minute gripping the wheel and trying to calm down, but she hasn’t even put the car in park by the time someone raps on her window, and she yelps again at the sound.

“Whoa, hang in there, sweetheart,” the elderly man on the other side of the glass says, and Daisy peers up at him through the snow-frosted glass, sure she must looked like a deer in the headlights. “Why don’t you set the parking brake,” the man says kindly, “and then we’ll make sure you and the car are ok?”

Daisy’s hands are shaking as she puts the car in park, pulls the parking brake, and cautiously rolls down her window a few inches.

“First of all, you all right?” the older man asks kindly, and Daisy nods silently, trying to get a decent lungful of air.

“You new in town?” he asks next, waving to someone across the lot, and Daisy nods again, sure he already guessed that.

“I’m not even sure what this town is,” she admits. “I just needed to get off the highway because I thought something was wrong with my car.”

“Well, you’re just outside of Douglas,” the man tells her, as if that’s supposed to mean something. “What happened to the car?”

“I don’t know, but whenever I hit the brakes, it sounded like something was grinding…”

“Inside the car? Or on the road?”

“Road?”

The man looks at his friend who has just walked up, and Daisy gets the impression they are exchanging pitying looks.

“You driven on snow much before, darling?” the second man eventually asks her, and Daisy narrows her eyes at him.

“Don’t call me ‘darling’.”

He quirks a brow at her and gives her a little wink. “You driven on snow much before, ma’am?”

Daisy sighs. “Not much,” she agrees.

_Never once._

The man shakes his head, seeming to understand her perfectly. “All right, well, kill the engine, pop the hood, and I’ll make sure everything’s all right. But I’m guessing you’re just getting a crash course on snow driving today.”

“It had better not be a _literal_ crash course,” Daisy grumbles to herself, rolling the window up and killing the engine. She pops the hood, shoves her phone in her pocket, and climbs out of the car.

She’s unprepared for the blast of wind that hits her as soon as she’s out in the open—she’d gotten in the rental car in a basement parking garage—not like she’d been paying attention to the weather before she’d started driving…and her slacks, dress boots, and pea coat are apparently not made to stand up to this kind of wind…

“Where you headed, ma’am?” the man closest to her asks as he and his friend inspect the engine.

“My mom’s place is near Cody,” Daisy offers around her chattering teeth, and the man glances at her with a surprised look.

“Oh you’ve got a ways to go then, and not much more of it’s interstate. You got chains for those tires?”

“Got what for the tires?” Daisy repeats.

“Chains?” the other man repeats. “Snow chains?”

“What are snow chains?” she asks.

The men share another glance— _yep, that’s definitely a pitying look_. “Oh, honey.”

The men at least are helpful and not terribly condescending, and Daisy eventually feels comfortable (or perhaps just freezing) enough to follow them inside the station, where one of them gives her a cup of over-sugared coffee while the other shows her the snow chains for sale and explains what they’re for.

“City slicker like you really shouldn’t be making her first drive like this all by herself,” the man mutters as Daisy wiggles her legs back and forth beneath her coat, trying to subtly rub some feeling back into them while the cashier rings her up for the chains.

“Well, my sister is already out there because she finished her college term two weeks ago,” she explains even though she knows she doesn’t have to, “and my mom making this drive twice in one day to pick me up at the airport and then drive back to her place there is asking an awful lot…”

The men don’t seem comforted.

“You sure you don’t want to just hitch a ride with one of the rigs heading out there?” the older of the two asks concernedly. “It’s supposed to keep snowing until tomorrow night anyway—not like those roads are going to get any safer…"

Her acceptance of the help of these strangers non-withstanding, getting in a truck with one is where Daisy draws the line, so she defers politely and gets back into her car feeling only marginally more confident now that she’s got a set of snow chains in the trunk if she needs them. The men had explained multiple times how to put them on, and she’d already bookmarked a video of it on her phone.

She texts an update to Kora while waiting for the car to warm up again, trusting she’d tell their mom where Daisy was—their mom almost never checked her cell phone these days…

**I’m apparently just outside of Douglas now, and it’s snowing. I’ll be driving slow. Tell Mom I probably won’t get there before dinner.**

**Ok be careful! Can’t wait to see you.**

Daisy puts her phone back in the cupholder and takes a deep breath.

_Just a snowstorm and a few hundred more miles of Wyoming standing between you and Mom’s place, and then you don’t have to drive again for a week. You can do this._

For mid-afternoon, the sky is already pretty dim as she gets back on the interstate, which is dusted with a layer of snow but not the level the men had recommended using snow chains for. This time, she drives well under the speed limit, still relying on the car’s GPS for directions, and after another hour or so, it guides her off the interstate and onto a state highway. On the four-lane road, the speed limit is lower, but the stakes certainly feel higher as she drives through what feel like some rather unimpressive mountains, their slopes adding a little fun to the already challenging roads. After another hour, she’s definitely getting hungry, and though her GPS says it’s two more hours to her destination, Daisy is certain it will be longer than that, so she starts keeping an eye out for fast food places off the highway.

Unfortunately, she seems to have left civilization behind at the interstate, because she drives for what feels like forever through more rolling hills, now covered in forests. She’s sure there must be some beautiful views in any direction, but Daisy is afraid to take her eyes off the road for even a second. She’s surprised by the number of cars she’s still seeing on the roads (most of them passing her driving much more confidently), even though the snow has continued to fall intermittently throughout her trip.

_Where could everyone possibly be going on December 21?_

She’s been out of the thickest forest for a little while when daylight starts to get dim enough for her to turn on the headlights, even though the dashboard clock says it’s only 4pm. The GPS has been reading ‘2 hours to destination’ for the past hour, which is not at all comforting and makes her wonder if she’s just driven in a nice big circle. With her eyes still on the road, Daisy reaches for her phone in the cupholder and holds it up on the steering wheel, checking Google Maps to see what time estimate it has…

It has none. Because she currently has no cell service.

_Wait. What?_

And just at that moment, as she steers through a curve in the road, the car just…keeps turning…

 _Turn into the skid_ , the men back at the station had said, but the phrase doesn’t get to the front of Daisy’s thoughts until she has already stomped on the brakes, the other thing they’d told her to do…

 _Or was it_ not _to do…_

It doesn’t matter at this point. Her car is spinning like an amusement park ride, and Daisy can’t do anything except screech like a pterodactyl and hope there are no cars coming for her to hit…

It’s almost a relief when the car finally spins off the road and thuds down into a ditch.

Daisy stays frozen with her hands on the wheel, gasping and trying to stop shaking for a long minute. The airbag didn’t blow, the engine is still running, there are no warning lights on the dash, and she’s lucky to have landed with the front of the car facing the road…

When she finally feels confident enough to try putting her foot on the gas though, the car revs but doesn’t move, and she hears something different than before…

“Turn the car off!”

The sudden manifestation of a voice that’s not her own actually makes Daisy scream again, and she looks around wildly. Outside her snow-streaked window, she can see a dark shape in the dimness, much taller than a person should be…

Cautiously, Daisy rolls the window down a few inches, and instead of seeing a person, she finds herself face to face with a horse.

“Honey,” a female voice calls from the direction of the horse’s head, “your tailpipe’s blocked—turn the car off right now!”

Dumbly, Daisy puts the car in park and kills the engine.

“Good,” the female voice calls encouragingly, “now put on the parking brake.”

Daisy obeys.

The horse’s rider has dismounted by then, and as she leans down to peer into the car, Daisy finally sees a face clearly.

“Hey,” the Asian woman says with a kind smile. “You all right?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy gets to the house and meets the crew

The woman outside her window has wide dark eyes beneath the hem of a snow-dusted knitted cap and a friendly smile on her face, but for a moment, Daisy can’t do anything but stare.

“You okay?” the woman eventually asks again, sounding more concerned this time, and Daisy finally remembers to nod.

The woman smiles briefly wider, looking relieved as she straightens up and pulls a walkie-talkie from a pocket of her thick-looking coat. “Good. You’re not getting that car out of this ditch without help though, so I’m going to radio one of my guys—we’ve got a tow truck on the property. Hit the hazard lights and then go ahead and roll your window up—keep the car warm while you wait.”

It’s getting dark fast outside the car, and as Daisy waits, she grabs her phone, meaning to fire off a text to Kora to tell her what’s happened before being reminded (again) that she has no cell service here…

Instead, she attempts to open the Maps app to find out where she’s just landed, but even _that_ fails to load…

When the stranger raps on the glass with a gloved hand a moment later, Daisy braces herself for the blast of cold wind before cracking the window.

“All right, my guys are all bringing in the herd right now,” the woman explains through the yielded space, “so it will be a bit before a couple of them can get out here to help you—where were you headed?”

“Cody,” Daisy answers, already wishing she could shut the window again.

The woman’s brows go up. “Cody? Shit, that’s another two hours from here, and that snowstorm is going to fill up these roads long before that. It’s not safe to make that drive tonight.”

“I’ve got snow chains…” Daisy offers helpfully, gesturing towards the back of the car, but the woman still shakes her head.

“Tell you what, why don’t I get you inside and at least make sure you get some dinner, and then once my guys get your car back on the road, we’ll get your chains on and see what the storm is doing. Sound good?”

Daisy can’t think of anything she’d rather do than _not_ be in this car, so she nods hurriedly. Out in the snow, the woman mirrors the gesture.

“Cool. Get your essentials and let’s get moving.”

Daisy has her phone and the car keys tucked in her purse as she opens the door, wincing as the wind smacks her in the face. Before she can swing a leg out, however, the woman puts an arm across the door to block her exit.

“You got layers on, hon?” she asks concernedly, eyeing Daisy’s slacks and peacoat.

“Uh…I’ve got a sweater on under the coat?” Daisy offers, and the woman glances around them.

“All right—you got a better coat or any better shoes in the car? A hat and gloves?”

Daisy considers what’s in her suitcase in the trunk. “I think I’ve got another scarf…”

The woman shakes her head, seeming amused, but then pulls the knitted hat from her own head, revealing dark braided hair beneath it, and tosses it into the car onto Daisy’s lap.

“Put that on.”

By the time Daisy has done that, the woman has also doffed her coat and tossed it onto Daisy’s lap too.

“You can put that on if it will fit over your other coat, otherwise you can put it over your legs once you’re up in the saddle. You been on a horse before?”

Despite Daisy’s insistence that she can walk, a few minutes later, she finds herself up on the horse with the woman’s coat spread over her thighs, clinging to the saddle horn while the woman walks ahead of the animal, leading it by the reins up the dark road. She’s got a puffy vest and long-sleeved flannel on, and despite the wind and flying snow, she doesn’t seem too bothered by the weather. The woman had said that there shouldn’t be much traffic on this road, but she still has a flashlight out in her hand for the benefit of any approaching cars.

“Let me know if you see any eyes getting close on the back or side of you,” the woman calls as they walk in the direction Daisy has been going. The horse is not quite trotting, but it still seems to be moving with purpose, as if it wants out of the cold as much as Daisy does.

“ _Eyes_?” Daisy repeats disbelievingly. “You got bears out here? Or cryptids?”

She had in fact already noticed a rifle hanging on the saddle in front of one of her knees…

“Nah, just coyotes and cougars, and sometimes elk,” the woman calls over her shoulder. “Everything should be hunkering down for the snow right now, but just in case it isn’t, tell me quick and I’ll get the gun…”

_Wait until I tell Kora about this…_

“Hey what’s your name?” Daisy calls, trying to grip the sides of the horse with her thighs like the woman told her to as it lumbers up the road.

Her savior glances back with a smile.

“You can call me May—most everyone does.”

“Aren’t you cold, May?” Daisy calls next, gripping the saddle horn with one hand so she can tuck the other in the pocket of her coat.

The woman shakes her head. “A little, but we’ll be there soon. Keep talking so I know you aren’t frozen—what are you doing driving to Cody?”

Daisy explains to her about her mom’s new property, the drive from Cheyenne, and the snowy roads that led her here. Before long, the two of them turn off the main road onto a gravel-covered, tree-flanked lane that runs towards a few lit houses that Daisy has never been so happy to see.

“Not sure why you mom didn’t have you fly into Billings instead of Cheyenne,” the woman is saying as they trudge through the dark. “That would have just been a two-hour drive to Cody…”

The trees open up at the end of the lane to reveal a large circular space surrounded by a few different structures, one of which is a _big_ house with blazing porchlights. May leads her horse right up to that one and hitches it to the porch rail while she helps Daisy down from the saddle.

“All right, let’s get you warm,” the woman says, slinging her coat over her shoulder and guiding Daisy up the porch steps by the elbow.

Through the front door, the first thing Daisy notices (besides how huge the house seems) is the smell of cinnamon. That’s partly because she can’t at first actually feel how warm it is inside…

“Phil?” May calls. “Jemma? We’ve got a dinner guest—come get her to the fire.”

A man appears from one room off the entryway, drying his hands on a dishtowel as he hurries towards them.

“Oh, you poor girl. Come on in—take your shoes off if you don’t mind—and let’s get something hot for you…”

“I’ve gotta put my horse up,” May says, backing out the door again as the man leads Daisy into a living room with a large fireplace and a twinkling Christmas tree. “You’re in good hands—I’ll be back soon.”

The middle-aged man pulls a chair close to the already-roaring fire and puts Daisy in it, then lays a woven blanket over her legs.

“Just stay right there and warm up for a bit—I’ll get you some coffee. Or tea?” He’s already moving back towards a kitchen, but he looks expectantly over his shoulder for her answer.

“Coffee please?” Daisy calls weakly.

He’s back a moment later with a full mug in his hands, which he immediately places in hers.

“Here, warm your hands up on that, and I’ll bring you some cream and sugar too if you want it.”

“Black is fine,” Daisy insists, already a little uncomfortable with so much attention.

The man nods, giving her a smile. He has thinning brown hair and is wearing a plaid shirt tucked into tan corduroy trousers.

“Well, you just sit right there and warm up for a bit. We’ll have dinner on the table soon.”

He gestures to the table between him and the kitchen, and Daisy’s eyes widen at the sight of a space big enough for at least a dozen people.

“How many kids do you guys have?” she wonders aloud, which makes the man laugh.

“Well not a single person here is related by blood,” he says, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops. “But it does sometimes feel like we run a high school.”

As if on cue, Daisy hears raised voices approaching from the opposite side of the house, and she looks back towards the foyer to see a brunette woman and a short, curly-haired man round the corner, clearly in the middle of a disagreement that actually sounds quite cute due to their pair of British accents.

“It’s _not_ the same thing, Fitz!” the woman is saying as she re-ties her hair in a messy bun behind her head. “You repeating something enough times can’t make it true.”

“Jem, if you would just take one step back and look at it from my side—”

He cuts himself off as they come through the doorway and he catches sight of Daisy.

“Company?” he says, glancing at the man standing near Daisy.

“May brought home a stray,” the man shrugs. “Add a place to the table.”

The pair that just walked in immediately abandons their argument and approaches to greet Daisy.

“Hi, I’m Jemma,” the woman says, shaking Daisy’s hand before gesturing to the man over her shoulder. “And this is my idiot husband.”

“Call me Fitz,” he says, taking his turn to shake her hand next. “I see Phil already got you coffee, but would you like a beer with dinner?”

“Oh, that’s okay, I don’t need dinner,” Daisy attempts, but her stomach betrays her with a loud growl, making the pair smirk.

“Don’t worry, we always have plenty to go around,” Fitz promises, following his wife over to a china hutch near the dining table, where they start pulling out dishes to set it with. “Have to when we feed a small army three times a day.”

“Army?” Daisy repeats, just before the front door blows open and said ‘army’ begins tramping in, dusted with snow. It’s a mixed group of mostly men and a few women, and the crowd immediately starts a slow file through the entryway as they strip and hang up hats and coats and peel off boots, headed for the part of the house that Jemma and Fitz had just come in from. No one notices Daisy, but Phil gives her a knowing smirk as he catches Daisy’s eye on the way back to the kitchen.

“Everyone’s going to wash up for dinner, but they’ll all be friendly once they notice you there,” he promises. “We don’t get too many visitors, so a new face is practically a holiday.”

Sure enough, once the people start making their way back through to the dining area, Daisy feels the need to get up from her chair before this starts to feel like a royal reception hall as she shakes multiple hands and fields several introductions. She has a feeling she won’t remember all of them by the time they sit down at the table, but she meets men named Mike, Lincoln, Trip, Mack, and Joey, as well as two more women named Elena and Raina. Everyone seems friendly and concerned about the circumstances that brought her here, and when she mentions May’s name, the man setting the table—Fitz—looks around the room concernedly.

“I guess May’s still in the stable…so is that where Bobbi is too?”

“Yeah,” one of the men says as he takes his glass and fills it from a water filter on a sideboard along one wall while others open and pass around beers. “They’re helping her untack and put up Zeph so it would go faster.”

Daisy is bustled to the table along with everyone else and directed to a chair. Places have been set, and Phil is in the process of setting platters of cornbread, bowls of mashed potatoes, and dishes of green beans and pot roast on the table. Everyone seems to be sitting in designated seats, because three places are left in the middle of the table. Before everyone is seated, the final occupants blow in—May, along with a tall woman and a wiry man with a short beard. They wash up quickly and join the table, and Daisy tucks in with everyone to one of the heartiest meals she’s had in a long time.

With so many people at the table, there are of course several conversations going at once, but Daisy slowly gleans from several sources what she was only assuming before—this isn’t a biological family, though there are several married and romantic couples at the table.

“So who actually owns this place?” Daisy asks between bites, and May, across the table from her, raises her glass while the man beside her, Trip, answers.

“May’s the one whose name is on the mailbox,” he says. “The rest of us are just live-in employees.”

“If by ‘employees’ you mean essential workers and contributors,” May reminds him. “Everyone here has a different skill set, and everyone contributes something to the overall production and stability of the homestead.”

“Homestead?” Daisy repeats, and the woman next to her (Raina?) explains.

“Like a farm, or technically a ranch since we make most of our money off livestock. But a homestead is less of a profit project and more of a single-family project. Sort of like living like the old times, but with, you know, modern technology and amenities. We try to grow, raise, or make as much of what we need as possible.”

“So what does that include besides a herd?” Daisy asks. “Which, I haven’t even heard, is a herd of…cows?”

“We have lots of cattle and sheep,” Trip answers with a nod, “enough horses to go around, and then a few pigs in the barn. Chickens in the back.”

“Regular Old MacDonald farm,” Daisy comments, taking another bite of pot roast. “This is a great dinner, by the way.”

“Most of what you’re eating was grown or raised here,” May informs her, looking proud. “We have greenhouses too, which Raina is in charge of. Year-round vegetables, and even some berries.”

“I manage our bees too,” Raina adds. “They’re an essential part of the greenhouse project.”

“What else does this place do?” Daisy asks, impressed.

A little bit of everything, it would seem. One of the women heads up a spinning/weaving effort using the wool from the annual sheep-shearing. Another man is heading up the group’s first attempt at a plot of wheat, which was milled into flour after the harvest this summer. One man organizes the dairy projects from the few dairy cows and goats, another heads up their home brewing projects.

“We make most of our money by selling livestock and contributing to the local farmer’s market,” Phil says, “but living together and eating what we make certainly cuts down on the cost of living and keeps the lights on.”

“My solar power project keeps the lights on,” Fitz reminds him from down the table. “And the houses warm, and the troughs thawed…”

“It’s an expression, Fitz,” one of the other men reminds him, cuffing him affectionately on the shoulder. “We all know you’re the second-smartest person in a thousand miles.”

“Second?” he repeats, giving the man a dramatically affronted look, but then his wife gives him a pointed look from his other side. “Oh, right.”

“Jemma’s our resident doctor,” May explains. She’s got a medical degree _and_ a Ph.D. And yet she graces us with her presence daily and keeps her husband here, which is also a plus.”

“She makes it sound like we’re slumming out here,” Jemma says, and now that the conversation has died down a bit, Daisy can hear her from the end of the table. “We came here while I was writing my dissertation so that Fitz could do a case study on implementing green technology on farms. It went so well that we decided to stay in the Plains for a while, trying to get more farms in the area on board so we could start a bit of a trend. That was three years ago though, and we still aren’t in any hurry to leave.”

“This property is actually carbon-negative,” Fitz says proudly. “We’re doing a five year study now on this place as well as a few other places where my equipment’s been installed—hoping we can get some new legislation passed requiring farms in the area to go greener.”

“And teach a few more mechanics in the area how to repair it,” the man next to him says. “It’s hard enough learning a whole new owner’s manual.”

“Okay, so what’s everyone else’s secret talent?” Daisy says, looking both directions at the table at the few people she hasn’t heard about yet.

“Joey’s our go-to guy for anything construction-related, and Mike’s our land-management expert,” the blonde woman says, pointing to the men in turn. “Lincoln there’s also got a half a medical degree, but he’s our electrician too.”

“And Bobbi’s our animal whisperer,” May says with an affectionate smile. “She practically speaks horse.”

“Well, I just run the house,” Phil says, catching Daisy’s eye. “But I’m also the only one who knows the secret recipe for the apple pie everyone likes best, so that’s my talent.”

“Is there pie tonight?” one of the men asks hopefully then, and Phil gets to his feet with a smile.

“No pie, but there’s a berry cobbler keeping warm in the oven. Fitz, pass out the dessert bowls.”

There’s a wave of happy sounds as everyone smiles and clears space on the table, but May catches Daisy’s eye while Phil gets up from the table.

“Did you get a chance to call your mom yet?”

The thought had not even occurred to Daisy since she’d gotten to the house, but now the realization hits her like a gut-punch.

“Oh my god, I haven’t. Do you have a landline I can use?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's specialties and relationships will have their moments later. For now, it was just meet-the-cast day. :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy fills her mom in. May gives her a house tour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not worried about posting a Christmas fic in January if you aren't ;)

The house’s landline is on the wall in the hallway that runs from the entryway all the way to the back of the house, and Daisy uses her cell phone to look up her mom’s home number because really, who memorized phone numbers anymore. Thankfully, Jiaying was better at answering her landline than her cell phone, and after two rings, someone picked up.

“ _Wei_?”

“Mom? It’s me.”

“Daisy!” Jiaying exclaims, immediately switching to English. “I have been worried _sick!_ Kora told me you should have been here by now, and I’ve been calling your phone for the past half hour…”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry Mom, but I’m all right. Something kind of unexpected happened though…”

She quickly explains about the snow and the accident, and her mother seems plenty upset about both.

“I’m sorry, Daisy, I hadn’t even thought about the roads and how you’ve never driven on snow…where are you now? Is the car drivable? Are you somewhere safe?”

Daisy pauses, realizing that she hasn’t even asked May, or anyone else here, where exactly _here_ is.

“Someone on a horse found me almost immediately after I went off the road and brought me to her house. Seems like she’s got a big kind of ranch around here, but I don’t know where _here_ we are actually. Hold on a second.”

Stretching the old-school phone cord as far as it will go, she is able to lean back around the corner of the wall and be seen by the people still all sitting at the dining room table, enjoying cobbler with ice cream. May, who seems to be waiting expectantly for her, catches sight of Daisy first and immediately gets up from the table, padding back into the hallway on her socked feet.

“My mom’s wondering where exactly I am?” Daisy asks, lifting the phone with her hand over the receiver.

“Ten Sleep,” May answers. “That’s who we pay our utilities and property taxes to, at least.”

Daisy repeats the answer into the receiver, but her mom has never heard of the town. May holds out a silent hand, beckoning for the phone, so Daisy passes it over to her.

“Hi there,” May says in the same friendly tone she’s been using since Daisy met her. “I’m Melinda May, I found your daughter on the side of the road—wanted to get her somewhere warm first…Yes, my property is just west of Ten Sleep in the Big Horn Basin…that’s on state highway 16…well, on a good day with no snow, you’d need about 2 more hours to get to Cody. I wouldn’t send anyone I cared about on a drive in snow after dark if it was avoidable though…no, I won’t drive her into town for our little motel—of course she can stay here! We have plenty of room…”

May ( _Melinda_?) abruptly pulls the phone from her ear, covering the receiver with her hand and meeting Daisy’s eyes.

“Hey, weird question, but is your mom Chinese?” She looks like she already knows the answer, but Daisy gets defensive immediately—force of habit.

“We’re American,” she says flatly, but this just makes May raise a brow.

“Yeah, well, so am I. But does your mom _speak_ Chinese?”

Daisy shrugs. “Last I checked…”

May brings the phone back to her ear with a smile.

“ _Nǐ huì shuō zhōngwén ma?”_

It only takes a little more persuading after that, insisting in polite Chinese that of course Daisy is welcome to stay as long as she needs to until it’s safe to drive again, and _of course_ they’ll help her get her car out of the ditch and make sure it’s in working order and that the roads are safe from here to Cody before sending her on her way…

It sounds pretty settled by the time May hands the phone back to Daisy with a smile, and she can hear her mom _almost_ smiling too on the other end as May heads back to the dining room.

“Do you feel comfortable staying with strangers? If you’re not, I can probably get out there and pick you up…”

“No Mom, please don’t drive. I really don’t want to be on snowy roads anymore, no matter who’s driving. And everyone here seems really nice. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay then. If you change your mind, or anything bad happens, don’t hesitate to call me, or text Kora.”

“I will. I don’t think my phone has any service out here, but there are a couple of engineers, so hopefully they have wifi…”

“Engineers? On a ranch?”

“Yeah, that was my reaction,” Daisy agrees. “I’ll hopefully be at your place by tomorrow. Save this number and try not to worry about me Mom.”

“Okay. Love you, baby.”

Daisy smiles into the phone. “Love you too. See you soon.”

People are moving away from the table when Daisy finally ducks back into the dining room, and May turns to Daisy as she gets to her feet too.

“I saved you a serving,” she says, pointing to a dish of cobbler on the table at Daisy’s place. “But can you give Mack here the keys to your car real quick? He’ll take a couple of guys to your car and get it towed up onto the property before the snow gets any deeper, or before anyone else hits it.”

Daisy goes to her purse and fetches the keys to the tallest man in the room ( _Mack_ —she’s going to get everyone’s names down eventually…) and he heads back to the front door with a couple of the bigger guys with him. Everyone else is clearing the table, stacking dishes on the kitchen counters while two of the men start filling the sink to wash them, and the others are pulling down coffee mugs from the hooks on the walls and filling them from the very large machine carafe in the corner that, Daisy guesses, is constantly full. She’s not sure whether she’s supposed to sit down and eat her dessert at a table that’s currently being cleared, but May just picks up her own beer bottle, hands Daisy a spoon, and gestures for her to follow her.

“Come on, the sofa’s better.”

The whole house is moving with a peaceful routine, and Daisy drifts along on it with an involuntary smile. The men who didn’t go outside are turning on a football game and piling into an L-shaped sofa, one of the couples is snuggling into a large recliner together, and May leads Daisy to the part of the large sofa that’s closest to the fire.

“Okay,” she says, settling down next to Daisy, “well, now you know all about us—tell me everything I ought to know about you.”

Daisy takes a quick bite of the cobbler in her bowl—it’s amazing, just like everything else she’s had tonight—and glances away.

“I can safely say I am the least interesting person in this room.”

May shakes her head. “No one’s totally boring. Start from the top—where did you grow up, since it obviously wasn’t here?”

So Daisy eats her dessert and, between bites, tells her about New York, about her sister and mom and her dearly-departed Dad, about her education at NYU and her job in information systems management…

“And this is your first time in Wyoming at all?” May asks as Daisy lowers her nearly-empty bowl to her lap.

“Yeah. Mom’s been working on this house for a while, but it wasn’t livable until this year, so she just kept visiting us in the east.”

“What does your sister do?”

“She’s in school still, studying energy management down in Texas. That’s why we flew in separately.”

“Well, here’s hoping you’re all together again soon. Though it’s going to depend on the storm, most of all…”

May calls to one of the women holding the remote, and he flips the channel to a weather station. Twelve inches of snow is predicted for the night, and May makes a face.

“They’ve been wrong before, but we prepare for the worst around here. I guess we’ll see in the morning.”

Just then, the front door blows open, and one of the men who left with Daisy’s keys steps into the entryway, setting her small suitcase on the rug.

“Is there anything else that you need out of the car?” he calls to her as Daisy gets to her feet and hurries over. “We’re putting it in the garage, but it’s not connected to the house, so you won’t really be able to get to it later.”

“No, that’s all. I’ve got my purse already. Thank you so much!”

The man ( _Trip? Was that Trip?)_ flashes her a thumbs up and ducks right back out into the dark. May is at her elbow then too, and she lifts the lid on one of the baskets by the door and pulls out a frayed bath towel.

“Here—you can dry it off with this, and then I’ll show you up to the guest room.”

Upstairs, a den is encircled by multiple doors, and three of the women are curled on the sofas watching a TV drama and chatting loudly, not pausing their conversation as May leads Daisy to the door furthest from the stairs. On the other side is a four-poster bed, dresser with a tall mirror, and nightstand, all made of a dark walnut. The bed is made up already with a pile of fluffy pillows and a patterned quilt, and there is a scented candle burning on the nightstand, filling the room with a soft, lavender scent.

“Phil must have snuck up here to make the bed before he sat down to watch the game with the guys, but that candle’s probably from Elena,” May says, pointing. “She makes them herself.”

Daisy tows her suitcase up to the dresser, looking around the room. There are framed, dried flowers on the walls. A sling chair next to the window. A crocheted afghan over the foot of the bed.

“There are towels in the closet,” May says, pointing to the accordion door in the corner. “And the closest bathroom is right next door. Do you want to call it a night? Or can I give you a quick tour?”

Daisy doesn’t want to miss any part of such an amazing house, so she simply leaves her purse on the bed and follows May back out the door.

All the doors on this floor are to bedrooms or bathrooms, except for the linen and utility closets, of course, May says. She points at doors and calls out names, and Daisy tries to review which couples match which faces.

_Mack and Elena…Bobbi and Hunter…Mike and Raina…_

“That little hall goes to all the single guys’ rooms…” May explains, pointing to the space furthest from the stairs. “Keeps the ‘man funk’ smell a little further from common areas. There’s an emergency stair at the end too, just to be safe.”

“More like for the walk of shame,” the blonde woman on the sofa ( _Bobbi_?) calls, catching Daisy’s eye with a knowing smirk.

“It’s not a very long walk when you’re just banging the guy across the hall,” the British woman ( _Jemma_?) murmurs, not looking up from the crocheting project she’s working on, and Bobbi swats her arm.

“That’s not first-evening gossip for a guest, Jemma,” she warns, glancing slyly at Daisy.

Jemma looks totally unfazed. “What? It’s not like they’re even trying to hide it. I’ve had laundry duty this week, and Joey and Lincoln’s stuff always comes mixed together…”

“Also Joey blushes every time someone even says Lincoln’s name…” the dark-haired woman ( _Elena_?) murmurs, smiling to herself.

“Okay, downstairs we go…” May says, guiding Daisy to the stairs, “before we scandalize you too much…”

Most of the ground floor is taken up by the large living/dining/kitchen area that Daisy has already seen, but on the opposite side of the entryway, there’s a library/office area free of TV but still equipped with a couple of computer desks around a fireplace. The blonde man and the British man ( _Lincoln and Fitz_ , Daisy is pretty sure) are leaning over a drafting table, discussing something on its surface, but Fitz quickly folds the large sheet of paper down when Daisy and May appear in the doorway.

“Just giving Daisy a tour,” May says, quirking a brow at Fitz. “Whatcha got there?”

“Nothing,” he says too quickly, beginning to roll the sheet up, and Lincoln gives him a subtle smirk. “Dishes are done. Jemma and I will head out when her show is over.”

“You sure you don’t want to sleep here tonight?” Lincoln says, turning to him. “Would probably be simpler, with the storm coming in. Otherwise, we’ll have to tunnel our way to each other in the morning.”

Fitz shakes his head. “It shouldn’t be that bad. We’ll risk it. Anyway—she’s got the guest room,” he says, nodding at Daisy.

“You just want out of kitchen duty in the morning,” May says with a shake of her head. “You know we’ve still got the fold-out in the living room. Maybe see if Bobbi and Hunter want to sleep over with you all though? Could lighten the load in the morning.”

Fitz sputters a little, and Daisy chuckles awkwardly at the double entendre.

“Just let me know what you decide,” May says, backing away from the doorway.

The hallway that houses the landline leads back to what May calls a mother-in-law suite (“It has its own exterior entrance, bathroom, kitchenette, and living area”) that belongs to Phil, and then she points to the neighboring door, which is hers.

“He and I get the ground floor, since we’re the old people in the house,” May jokes, flipping on the light so Daisy can see the inside of her room. The space is decorated with black, gray, and purple tones, and while it looks a little spare, the braided rug on the floor makes it look very homey.

“They said you’re the owner…was this house always this big?” Daisy asks, looking at her. “It feels like it’s tailor-made for you all.”

May smiles. “When I was growing up here, it was just a simple three-bed, two-bath,” she says, flipping off the light and closing the door to her room again. “That house is now the guest-house. All my men lived off-site for a while, renting apartments in town or renting from other families, but once we had the funds and the help, we started working on plans for a big house where everyone could stay together. We had a good thing going by then; it just made more sense. And everyone was up for the challenge, so there was lots of input on the plans. Each of the bigger upstairs bedrooms has its own bathroom, so the couples can have a little more privacy, and communal living is cheaper by the dozen, when you can just buy one set of living furniture instead of ten. Fitz and Jemma rent my guesthouse, and if anyone wanted to join them there, we could all talk about it and come to an agreement about it together.”

They’re headed back to the main room now, and Daisy sees that three men who went out for her car are now sprawled on the sofas with the others from before.

“Phil?” May calls, and he lifts his chin at her. “Dogs?”

He nods. “They oughta be dry by now.”

May leads Daisy through the kitchen to a back room that appears to be a covered sun porch, though it is certainly not warm now—it’s nearly the same temperature as the outside. On the other side, two dogs leap to their feet, tails wagging, and May pulls Daisy out of the way as they barrel into the house.

“The darker one is Deke, the other’s Lola,” May says as the two border collies disappear towards the living room. “We leave them in here during dinner so they don’t get underfoot, and so they can dry off before they track mud everywhere.”

Out in the living room, everything feels homey and comfortable, and May turns to Daisy.

“Hope you’re okay hanging out here tonight, or even tomorrow if the snow gets too deep.”

Daisy, already smiling to herself, turns the smile on May.

“This is the best house _ever_. I couldn’t ask for a better place to get stuck.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking up to see what the snowstorm has left behind. Daisy learns something surprising about one of the family members.

Daisy is a little confused when she wakes up the next morning, blinking around a space that feels much colder and brighter than her home in New York does. Her eyes fall on the candle on the nightstand, and the moment she remembers the day before, Daisy sits up quickly.

Light is bleeding around a thick curtain covering her window (“Keep it closed against the cold, not just the light,” May had said when she’d told Daisy goodnight), and her phone says that it’s just about eight in the morning. The quilt and flannel sheets had kept Daisy plenty warm throughout the night, so she doesn’t feel the cold until she swings her bare feet out and onto the hardwood floor. Cold tendrils twine around her ankles, and Daisy quickly hurries to her open suitcase next to the dresser in order to hunt for the thickest pair of socks she brought. None of them are all that thick, so she just pulls on two pairs.

Over the leggings she slept in, she adds a pair of yoga pants, and over her t-shirt she adds a pullover fleece that she hadn’t expected to wear in front of anyone except her family—it’s got the NYU logo on it.

A couple of doors around her are standing open when Daisy ventures out on the landing for a trip to the bathroom, and muffled light is streaming through the scattering of skylights on the vaulted ceiling over the den. Squinting up at one of them, Daisy guesses that there must be a layer of snow over it—it certainly doesn’t look like sky up there.

After using the bathroom and brushing her teeth, Daisy spots one of the women just exiting her room as she steps out of the bathroom.

“Good morning!” Elena calls in a voice that is not very quiet. “I was wondering when we’d see you.”

“Mmm?” Daisy murmurs, glancing around at their surroundings. It seems quiet, but she’d just assumed everyone was still sleeping.

“Just me and you up here now,” Elena says, reading her mind. “Everyone got up for morning chores before dawn. Most of it got slowed down today because of the snow, so a lot of them are still outside.”

“And you drew the long straw?” Daisy says, noticing that Elena is fully dressed anyway.

“I have kitchen duty this morning, so all I had to do was gather eggs and help cook. Phil’s got almost everything ready downstairs, still waiting for everyone to make it back in. I just came up to see if you were up yet.”

Daisy’s brow crinkles. “How much did it snow?”

Elena smirks. “Come see for yourself.”

She beckons Daisy towards the door she emerged from, and Daisy follows her into a large bedroom with a king-sized bed, a desk, a long dresser, and what looks like a large walk-in closet with a bathroom off one side. There are lots of paintings hung on the wall, but Elena waves her up to the large window where the curtain is already parted, and Daisy gasps as she approaches it.

“Oh wow.”

Everything is covered in white, as far as the eye can see, and snow is still coming down.

“You probably didn’t see anything clearly when you came in last night, since it was nearly dark,” Elena says, pointing into the distance, “but that’s the road you drove in on. The garage is that building—” She points to a long, low building nearest the house, “and Fitz and Jemma live in that house on the other side of it.” It’s a low ranch house, Daisy thinks, but it looks barely taller than the snow around it.

“So how much snow was it, all said?” Daisy breathes. “I thought the forecast said twelve inches…”

Elena turned from the window, smirking at Daisy. “It’s probably more like eighteen by now. But we’ve got drifts much higher against all the door and walls, so that makes things interesting in the morning.”

Moving over to the dresser, Elena picks up a stack of thin black garments. “These are some thermals with fleece or heat-tech in them—if you don’t plan on leaving the house, you might not need them, but definitely put them on if you do.”

Daisy smiles gratefully. “Thanks, but I’ll need a lot more courage before I set foot out in that…”

Elena smirks, holding the garments out to her. “Well, just hang onto them until you leave. Maybe you’ll get some courage later…”

After Daisy tosses the clothes on her bed, she heads downstairs with Elena, where they find Phil sitting at the dining table alone, nursing a coffee with a tablet propped in front of him, scrolling the news headlines.

“Still waiting?” Elena calls, making him look up.

“They’re trying to get FitzSimmons out of their house. Every door had a few feet of snow in front of it.”

“So Bobbi and Hunter didn’t stay over with them?” Elena asks as she picks up a cup of coffee that was already on the counter, adding several teaspoons of sugar.

Phil smirks to himself. “Oh no, they did. But they had a drift as tall as Bobbi in front of the garage that had the snowblower…”

Elena glances at the entryway.

“Maybe I’ll see if I can help… oh wait, here comes the cavalry…”

She does not in fact mean horses, because when Daisy moves towards the front windows, she sees that Jemma is in fact being carried on Bobbi’s back, only being lowered to her own feet when she can stand on the porch steps. Mack is also carrying Fitz slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, something he appears to be protesting loudly but still unable to fight. Mack more or less dumps Fitz on the porch too, then waves at Elena, who he can see through the window.

“We’re almost done!” he says, pointing at something in the distance, though Daisy isn’t sure what.

She can hear some kind of motor running outside as Jemma and Fitz tumble in the door, allowing in a blast of frigid air that makes Daisy actually gasp. The two are well-bundled up, but Jemma doesn’t look quite herself as she sinks down on a bench and starts pulling off her (snow-free) boots.

“What did you do to earn a ride over?” Elena asks, folding her arms skeptically at the two.

“Woke up feeling rotten,” Jemma grumbles, pulling off her knitted cap. “And your husband didn’t want Fitz to disappear in the snow…”

“He said I’m short and white enough it might be the last time you all saw me…” Fitz mutters, hanging his coat on a hook (for the first time, Daisy notices that everyone has their own…). “But I think he just didn’t want Jemma to feel too self-conscious.”

“Are you sick?” Elena asks, immediately putting the back of her hand to Jemma’s forehead. “You should have stayed in bed…”

Jemma waves off Elena’s concern, heaving herself to the kitchen as Phil greets her. When she bends to whisper something to him, he gives her a concerned look, then immediately hops to his feet and hurries back into the kitchen while she moves towards the small table and flips the switch for the kettle that sits next to the coffeemaker. 

“How did you sleep?” Jemma asks politely as Daisy follows her into the dining room.

“Just fine,” Daisy answers, watching Jemma concernedly as she moves slowly around the table, fetching a mug and setting it by one already-lain place. “I’ve never slept on a feather pillow before.”

“It’s always quite the experience your first time,” Jemma says with a smile, accepting a handful of something from Phil and immediately dropping it into her mug. “I don’t know if you’ve already guessed, but from the look of this snowfall, you’ll be here at least another day or two.”

“I’m really okay with that,” Daisy says honestly, watching as Jemma adds water from the fresh kettle to her mug.

“It’s just some fresh ginger to settle my stomach,” Jemma tells her, catching Daisy’s eye as she brings the mug to her lips. “I’d like to get at least a bite of Phil’s flapjacks down…”

A commotion in the back of the kitchen makes them all turn that direction, and Phil quickly moves towards an oven.

“All right, let’s get some food on this table…”

The crowd is all coming in from the back today, all rosy-cheeked and rubbing cold fingers as they make their way through the kitchen, minus coats, hats, gloves, and scarves.

“The sun porch is also a literal mud room when snow and rain come,” Elena explains, answering Daisy’s unasked question. “That way we aren’t dripping all over the wood floors.”

Daisy is greeted by almost everyone as they make their way to the table, pouring coffee and glasses of milk and juice while Phil and Elena move platters of food to the table. May greets her with a smile and a gentle hand across her shoulders, directing Daisy to take a place next to her, like before.

“Well, we’ve certainly earned these pancakes,” she says with a contented sigh, reaching for the platter nearest her and grabbing three. “Snow always makes morning chores a lot longer.”

“How many inches does it look like?” Daisy asks, following everyone’s lead and serving herself from the plates of pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and fruit compote.

“Gotta be at last eighteen,” May says, passing her butter and syrup. “But there were some three-foot drifts against the barn, which of course we had to get into to do all the milking and feeding…”

“But on the flip side, snow days mean we’re lying low today—an enforced day off,” Joey says cheerfully. “It’s not worth the effort of digging out the garages or workshops, and the animals are set up well…”

“Well, I’ll still need someone to clear a path to the greenhouses, so I can check on the bees,” Raina interjects.

Bobbi snorts into her coffee. “Maybe Mack will just carry you, like he carried Fitz…”

Everyone seems cheerful and satisfied when the plates are empty, but this time everyone lingers at the table with second cups of coffee. Daisy leans back in her chair and listens to the stories of the morning, but she still notices that Jemma excuses herself to the bathroom before everyone starts moving again, returning looking a little pale. When she takes her seat next to Fitz, he slips an arm around her shoulders, and they exchange whispers, then slip off upstairs without ceremony.

“Daisy, if you’d like to see the greenhouses, we’ll help Raina out there,” Trip says suddenly, drawing Daisy’s attention.

“Elena said she’d be offering you some layers—did she?” May asks, and Daisy nods.

“I’ll go suit up,” she says, bringing her coffee with he as she heads for the stairs.

Up in the den, she finds the British couple on one sofa, with Jemma stretched out on her stomach, face down in the cushion, and Fitz perched next to her, rubbing her back.

“Are you all right?” Daisy asks, even though it’s clear Jemma isn’t. “Do you want me to go get—”

“I’ll be fine in a bit,” Jemma says, her voice a bit muffled in the sofa. “It’s usually only bad in the mornings.”

Fitz glances up at Daisy, making meaningful eye contact, and Daisy understands.

“Oh! Wow! Uh, congratulations?”

“We haven’t told everyone yet,” Fitz says quickly. “So please don’t say anything about it to the others. We were hoping to surprise everyone at once.”

“I can keep a secret, don’t worry,” Daisy says quickly. “And I know I took the guest room, but if you’d like to lie down on my bed, you’re welcome to the room.”

Jemma finally lifts her head, smiling blurrily up at Daisy. “Thank you, that’s rather kind.”

Daisy nods, backing towards her room’s door. “Let me just change my clothes real quick…”

Behind her closed door, she quickly changes into the thermal layers Elena loaned her, over which she pulls her jeans, two long-sleeved shirts, and her NYU fleece again. She doesn’t have a hat or gloves, but both are provided from a basket by the door when she gets back downstairs.

“Those shoes won’t do,” Elena says, pointing at the ankle boots Daisy was wearing when she arrived last night. “Here—you can wear my boots…”

“And my coat,” Bobbi says, swinging down a thick black quilted coat from a hook. “Just don’t forget about it and leave it in the greenhouse.”

“Why would I be taking it off?” Daisy mutters to herself as one of the men opens the front door and the cold blows in…

Out on the porch, Raina is wrapped up in a thick scarf over a long wool coat, her curls barely peeking out from beneath a knitted cap, and Mike and Mack are waiting to escort them.

“I don’t think you’ll need a piggyback ride for more than a little of the walk,” Mike says, helping Daisy down the slick porch steps onto a thick blanket of snow, “but try to walk in our tracks—it will make things easier.”

The wind is not as bad as it was last night when she arrived, but Daisy still keeps her chin tucked into the neck of her fleece, peering up only to watch the feet of the man in front of her and look where he points as he explains the surroundings to her.

“That’s the garage over there—we put your car in there last night. Joey and Mack’s tools are all in there, and Fitz gets to use the workshop too if he behaves…”

“That barn there is for the sheep, the nearer one is for the horses…the cattle barn is back behind that one…”

“The chicken coop is in with the pigs—bacon and eggs in one place…”

“And here’s the part we haven’t cleared yet,” Mack says ahead of her, moving the wide shovel in front of himself and starting to clear snow out of the way. “Stand by.”

In the end, they’re able to make a passable footpath just wide enough for them to all slide through, approaching a earth-walled building that has a curved glass roof opposite one wall.

“This is the biggest greenhouse,” Raina calls as she fumbles with the latch. “where most of the bees are.”

A little more digging is required in order for her to get the door open far enough to slip through, but on the other side, Daisy is shocked by the warmth and the darkness.

“Welcome to heaven,” Raina says with a knowing smile as she pulls off her hat and shakes off the snow that had collected one it. “Lose a layer and follow me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, saw [this](https://gryffinpufflibrarian.tumblr.com/post/639755410520276992/soothifying-sounds-asmr-48-hour-time-lapse-of) tonight right after posting and feel like it should be here:


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Passing the snow day with May's family.

There are two layers of thick blankets standing between Daisy and Raina and the interior of the greenhouse, and once they duck around those, Daisy is convinced that she doesn’t need her coat anymore.

“How does a half-glass house stay this warm?” she wonders aloud as she shrugs off Bobbi’s coat and pulls off the borrowed hat and gloves, stuffing both in the coat’s pockets. She can’t even see through the curved glass roof, there’s so much snow on it.

Raina points at the ceiling, the place where the glass roof meets the solid earth wall that forms the flat side of the house.

“See those machines up there? It’s a shade system that’s on a timer. It runs down the supports of the glass roof and unrolls what’s basically a space blanket, which keeps all the heat gained during the day inside when the temperature drops at night.” Raina is leading her down a narrow path that runs along the earth wall, passing rows of green plants that Daisy doesn’t know how to identify. “We monitor the temperatures of course, to make sure everything can stay healthy, but I already checked on those from inside the house this morning—Fitz has got a good wireless system for that.”

They’ve reached the far end of the greenhouse, where another packed-earth wall yields only one doorway, also covered by a thick blanket. Raina taps her hand lightly around it before glancing back at Daisy.

“Just giving any bees on the other side a quick warning,” she explains. “If any fly too close, you don’t need to swat at them—they won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”

On the other side of the blanket is an identical section of greenhouse, this one much bigger, but Daisy sees another doorway in the wall at the far end of this section, too.

“It just keeps going on…” she murmurs, following close to Raina.

“This middle section is where we’ve got some berries, all the tomatoes, and the cherry trees.” Raina explains, pointing as they walk. There are also several types of flowers planted sporadically around the space, even a few orchids hanging in pots over the walkway. “And here’s the hive right here…”

She turns off the narrow aisle to a furrow that seems to be where the trees and berry plants border each other. Daisy had been picturing a conical hive, but what she sees is more like a box—one not quite big enough for a cat. She can hear a droning buzz emitting from it, and she hesitates on the walkway rather than following Raina.

“You don’t have to come closer if you don’t want to,” the woman calls as she picks up a funny-shaped contraption sitting on a wire shelf near the hive, “but as long as you don’t kick the box, they shouldn’t bother you at all.”

The contraption has a pump like a bellows on it, and Daisy guesses that it must be smoke that Raina is pumping in to the hive. Off comes the lid, and Raina checks its underside before carefully setting it on the ground.

“I just want to make sure their queen is still alive, make sure they’ve still got plenty of honey,” she says, pumping more smoke in before removing an inner cover and then lifting out a rectangular frame that is _moving_.

“Oh, my god,” Daisy can’t help muttering at the sight of so many bees all in one place.

“Oh, there she is!” Raina says happily, not appearing at all fazed by the number of potentially-deadly insects she’s holding in her hands. “Looking good! And plenty of honey in this frame too…”

Raina checks two more frames before she’s satisfied, but Daisy hangs back the entire time—it’s interesting, but that amount of bees is just a little too much for her to handle calmly. She lets out a long breath once Raina has packed the hive back up and made her way back to Daisy.

“Well, that’s all the bees need from me, but Phil asked if I could grab a few fresh things for the kitchen before we go back in. Follow me.”

Daisy trots along after her and follows Raina through to the next section of greenhouse. More rows of a variety of things Daisy can’t identify, and although nothing is labelled, Raina leads her straight up to one row and into the thick of it.

“Can I use your hands?” she asks, sinking easily to her knees between two rows of straight, dark green stalks. “I’ll pull, but can you get the worst of the dirt off?”

“Sure,” Daisy says, hanging Bobbi’s jacket over a nearby cable and following Raina into the vegetables. “What are these?”

The woman has already pulled one from the ground, holding it up to Daisy. “Break a top and you’ll know.”

Daisy starts brushing the dirt off the bulb and suddenly knows without needing the smell to confirm it.

“Onions!”

She has a half-dozen dangling from her hand before Raina moves them to another row of thin, lime-green stalks that form a veritable cloud across the ground. These are carrots, she sees once Raina pulls the first one, and by the time she’s pulled ten, she calls Daisy down in the dirt to give pulling one a try (it’s a bit harder than it looks…). Back in the bee section of the greenhouse, they pull several red tomatoes off the vines, filling their pockets with them (Bobbi’s coat has quite a few actually…).

Phil also had asked for some fresh rosemary, and this Raina plucks straight into her hat before nestling it back over her hair, so Daisy can smell the fragrance as they bundle up again for their trek back across the snow.

Back at the house, Raina leads her to the back mud room that everyone had used that morning, rather than the front door, offering her a pair of rubber house shoes once she’s stepped out of Elena’s snowy boots.

In the kitchen, the warmth is welcoming, and Daisy sees Phil with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, kneading dough on the kitchen island.

“Thanks girls,” he says once he catches sight of them dumping the fresh-picked produce into a bin on the floor that Raina directs her too (“Keeps the dirt in one place”).

“And where would you like the rosemary?” Raina asks as she flips her hat carefully off her head, holding it by its hem.

Phil smiles. “Straight into that colander in the sink is fine. Daisy, you know how to make bread?”

Daisy does not in fact, know how to make bread, but she gamely pushes up her sleeves, washes her hands, and comes to his elbow to watch the way he kneads the dough. She doesn’t feel like she’s doing too great of a job, but he’s patient and encouraging, and that helps her power through.

“What did I miss?” Elena says, entering while in the process of braiding her hair. “I told you to holler if you were doing anything—we were just doing a puzzle.”

“It’s okay, I had plenty of help,” Phil says, gesturing to Daisy and the covered bowls where they had left the dough to rise. “Just about to start on the soup.”

Daisy lingers in the kitchen while the two start washing vegetables, and when Phil asks if she wouldn’t mind peeling the carrots, she readily agrees. The two ask about her life story too while they work, and Daisy gets to hear about the strange circumstances that brought Elena from Colombia to Wyoming.

“I was an art teacher in Colombia for years, but I heard about a postgrad program in art therapy at one of the universities here and really wanted to do it. I met someone from this farm there—they were studying zoo therapy. They brought me around for a visit, I met Melinda, then I met Mack, and the rest was history.”

“She still does art therapy, in case you couldn’t tell,” Phil says, gesturing to the large canvas on the wall furthest from the stove and the one mounted near the dining table.

“Those are yours?” Daisy exclaims, hurrying over to inspect the nearest painting more closely. They’re a little bit abstract, but she feels like the one in the dining room is a depiction of the area’s mountains (the ones Daisy _didn’t_ see from the plane…).

“Yep. I have a little studio up in the attic, but we haven’t gotten around to insulating it too well yet, so I stay out of there in the coldest months and stick to drawing on the sofa.”

“We keep offering to help her move everything down to the library,” Phil says, now filling a stock pot at the sink.

“And I keep telling you that I don’t trust you all with my paints just lying around,” Elena said with a tone that tells Daisy that she’s getting tired of repeating herself. “Also I don’t like being watched or interrupted when I’m working…”

“So what’s going in the soup?” Daisy quickly says, still in the habit of diffusing arguments, however small. “Onion, carrot…what else?”

“We have some frozen bone broth from the fall that I’m going to thin this out with,” Phil says as he turns on a burner beneath the large pot now on the stove. “And two more chickens that I’m going to chop up. If you don’t mind chopping onions, we’ll have those, carrots, celery, potatoes, and lots of herbs—all the good stuff for a snow-day chicken soup, and I’ll throw some dumplings in right before it’s time to eat it.”

The soup, as it would seem, is not really for lunch (“It will taste _so_ much better if we can let it simmer all day,” Elena assures her). Everyone is on their own for the midday meal (if you’re actually hungry after that enormous breakfast…). Daisy gladly helps them chop vegetables (a kitchen skill that no self-respecting daughter of Chinese descent can be without…), and as they’re adding the last of them to the pot, someone else finally joins them in the kitchen.

“How’s it going in here?” Melinda says, suddenly drifting into the kitchen with a quiet grace that makes Daisy feel both envious and bashful all of a sudden. Melinda is wearing sweatpants, her flannel shirt unbuttoned over a black thermal shirt, her hair hanging loose from the braid it had been locked in this morning.

“Just getting it all in the pot,” Phil says, and Daisy watches as Melinda leans her cheek on his shoulder while he stirs their concoction.

“Bread going in the oven soon?” she asks, and Phil nods, glancing down at her, a gesture that brings their faces rather close together.

“How dare you suggest I let everyone starve?”

Daisy suddenly feels like she’s the third wheel in the room, so she just follows after Elena, who is cleaning off the countertops and adding the vegetable waste to a plastic bin by the trashcan.

“Gotta keep the lid on it or the dogs will get into it,” she explains, “but this is for anything that we can compost. Did Raina show you that project?”

Daisy shakes her head, and Elena snorts.

“She’s the one who benefits the most from it—her flowers have never looked so good…”

“Daisy, Elena, we’re going to play a game of Dixit,” May says then, gesturing to the dining room table, where a few of the guys are setting up a board game. “Either of you want in?” She’s still leaning a little on Phil, his arm now around her shoulders. Daisy has questions, but she shakes them off.

“I have no idea what that game is,” she admits. “But I’ll play if you’ll teach me.”

May smiles at her. “Of course. Tell Lincoln which color rabbit you’d like to be,” she says, pointing at the blond man who is shaking small wooden tokens out of a plastic bag. “Lincoln! Let Daisy pick first.”

The game turns out to be rather simple, but unfortunately for Daisy, winning hinges mostly on having a decent knowledge of the other people playing, so any points Daisy accrues for herself are sheer luck. It’s nice though, watching everyone play and hearing them tease each other and make each other laugh, moments that speak to years of comfortable coexistence. It’s something Daisy’s rarely seen between people who aren’t related.

It’s nice.

The men are suggesting lunch about the time the smell of fresh-baked bread starts to waft in from the kitchen, and even though she’s still plenty full from the morning, Daisy can’t turn down a slice from a hot loaf once it comes out of the oven.

“Did you get to watch Phil mix this?” May asks around a bite of her own slice, slathered with plum jam that she said Jemma had made back in the summer. Daisy shakes her head, and May smiles. “He says the recipe is simple, and yet in twenty years he’s never been willing to share it with me. He’s got it memorized of course, so it’s not like I can search his things for a recipe…”

“How long have you guys been together?” Daisy asks, sensing her opportunity, but Bobbi, still at the table near them, immediately bursts out laughing.

“Daisy you aren’t the first person to assume that,” she says, rounding on her while May shakes her head, “but I would love to hear if May gives you a different answer than she gives the rest of us.” A few others are chuckling too, but Daisy still doesn’t understand what she’s missing and looks expectantly at May, who is smiling.

“We aren’t together, everyone just thinks we are,” she says, patting Daisy’s arm.

“My wife and her husband passed away in the same year when May and I were younger people,” Phil says from behind her, leaning over her to add another sliced loaf of bread to the table, along with a pot of honey that Daisy is already sure came from Raina’s bees. “We were living fifteen states apart, and one night when May and I were commiserating over the phone, she invited me to come and stay for a while, just so neither of us would be alone. And then I never left.”

”I’m still sure that you’re leaving him the house in your will,” Mack calls from the sofa, where he is stretched out with a book.

“Who else?” May calls back. “Gotta make sure someone keeps this place running after I’m gone.”

“She’s got a lot of faith that I’ll outlive her,” Phil says, catching Daisy’s eye with a wink.

As everyone snacks their way through the day and snow continues to fall, Christmas cookies are suggested to pass the time (and tide everyone over to dinner). Before long, the dining table and counters are covered with flour, bowls of dough, cookie cutters, baking pans, and, on one end, icing and sprinkle options. The dozens of gingerbread, sugar, and spritz cookies become the perfect addition to dinner, when the soup is finally served after everyone except Phil and Elena has made another run out to the barns for evening chores, re-clearing the paths in the process.

After dinner, May comes down from the attic with a large crate of Christmas ornaments, making Daisy notice for the first time that the tree has not yet been decorated.

“We got the tree up two weeks ago, and it took us another week to get lights on it,” May explains to Daisy as she pulls smaller boxes and bundles of tissue and bubble wrap from the crate, passing them around as everyone sets to work unwrapping them. “Getting snowed in is one of the only ways it would ever get decorated.”

There are all sorts of things unwrapped, and Daisy just sits back, enjoying the sight of the tree gradually becoming covered with ornaments made of wood, glass, wool, straw, metal, and even feathers. Most of the things she touches feel handmade. Some, she immediately guesses came from Elena, but others feel like they were made with different hands. There is a garland of paper stars, a roll of red ribbon that looks to have been knitted by hand, and even a star that appears to be made of gold-stained barbed wire. Many hands make light work, and once the tree is crowned with the star after only twenty minutes of group decorating, everyone cleans up the paper and flops down on various surfaces, just in time for the dogs to come bounding back in. Jemma, Fitz, Bobbi, and Hunter head out to their house with Trip and Lincoln following after to make sure they get there okay, and Daisy settles next to May on the sofa while someone turns on _Christmas Vacation_.

“Three days to Christmas,” May yawns beside her, settling into the cushions with her arm pressing Daisy’s. “Hopefully the state will clear a path to your mom’s place for you by then. I’m sure she can’t wait to see you.”

Daisy looks around the room at the twinkling tree, the crackling fire, the half-dozing couples, friends, and dogs, and just shakes her head.

“Hopefully they don’t move that snow too fast.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is mostly just me writing about all my favorite things if you can't tell. 
> 
> I know the romance is pretty understated right now but we're just getting started. ;) I have/had no plan of how long this will be, just a loose outline, so we'll see how long it takes to get there.


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